Unhinge, Release
by Malvolia
Summary: Eventually, just plain living takes its toll. Dan's life on the Island in the 1970's.


His mind doesn't unhinge until they're comfortable.

_All possibilities may become realities._

In the early days they have secret meetings, clandestine strategic conferences about how their days went and what they plan to do tomorrow, and it feels like progress so he stays focused and pushes his darker moods aside. After a few months, the planning stops and the living starts. Jin's English is improving, Miles has taken a strange dislike to Dr. Chang, and every time he catches them off-guard he sees that Juliet and James are holding hands. He suspects it won't be long before Jin catches on and asks to move in with him and Miles. Eventually just plain living takes its toll, and everywhere he sees Charlotte laughing, and running, and growing towards a destiny he prays can be altered.

_Why didn't he tell her he'd met her now when he met her then?_

He doesn't speak to her. He's afraid. How do you speak to the woman you love before you've ever met her, before she's even a woman, and keep things light and casual? Even if the emotions he had felt for her had been different…. He asked Juliet once how she could stand Ben coming to talk to her every day. "Because he isn't Ben," she said, sadness in her eyes. "Not yet." But Charlotte could never be anyone but Charlotte to him, and so he doesn't let himself talk to her. Wouldn't even if her mother didn't keep an extra sharp watch on her when he was around.

_Not allowed to eat chocolate before dinner, especially not from strangers._

These nights, while Miles is snoring in the next bedroom, Dan's light is burning. The walls are covered with pages of equations, the windows with chalk diagrams. He gets a few hours of sleep per night and then he wakes up, starts where he left off, puts in a good hour of work every morning before heading off to his duties on the construction crew.

_I was the crazy man, he should have said, _

Everyone else is getting used to it, that this is where they live. "LaFleur" still has Jin and Miles sweeping grids of the island, looking for their friends from another time, but nobody really expects to find anything. And every night Dan's light burns a little longer, and there are callouses on his fingers where his pen rests, and the construction foreman is beginning to notice that he isn't putting in the same level of work he was before.

_and she would have said, You still are, _

Late one night, or early one morning, depending on your point of view, Dan is sketching a new diagram on the window when Horace Goodspeed appears on the other side. It doesn't startle him—these days lack of sleep seems to calm his nerves, he says. (Miles says "deaden" would be a more appropriate verb choice and has offered to bring a few cases of DHARMA vodka back to the bungalow to accomplish the same effect.)

_and that would've been their constant._

Dan meets Horace on the front porch. "Evening," he says.

"Morning."

"What brings you out at this hour?"

Horace shrugs. "Too many thoughts," he answers simply, and Dan doesn't need any further explanation. After all, he's a man who understands obsession.

_It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward._

"I've seen your window," Horace continues conversationally. "Doesn't look like anything you'd be working on for Tony."

"No," Dan admits. "Just a side project of mine."

_The things he remembers best happen thirty years from now._

"Quantum mechanics?" asks Horace, and Dan's surprise must show. "I took a course in college. Or tried. I dropped out in a week because I didn't want an F on my transcript."

Dan nods but says nothing. What little talent for small talk he had has been gradually eroding since Charlotte became nothing more than the ghost of a memory and the promise of future tragedy.

_This place is death. _

"Well, if you're doing quantum mechanics in your spare time, I'd bet you aren't enjoying construction," Horace says apologetically. "You should have told us. We want to make sure everybody's talents are used to maximum effect." He receives no reply. "I need to send someone to our research center in Ann Arbor, and I'd like to submit your name and file to them for the assignment. They have state-of-the-art facilities and world-renowned scientists. I'd put in a good word for you—you might be able to get your own lab space in a few months, if you work out. Interested?"

_It used to be life. _

He's a thousand miles away already before he answers yes, jumping forward/back in time as he says good-bye to Horace, and when he falls onto his bed with the lights still blazing, he sees Charlotte's face (Theresa's? no, the red hair, it's Charlotte's) and hears Theresa's laugh (really hers) and they're his two strikes and he refuses to strike out again.

_Might still be both._

When the sun rises he packs, knowing he won't be leaving for another few weeks but needing to convince himself somehow that this is real. He finds his whole life fits into a single briefcase.

_Choose your own reality._

He can't figure out how many lives fit into his head. Or how to let them go. Or if he wants to try.


End file.
